Mea Culpa
by graver
Summary: The only thing worse than guilt is not remembering. Peter and Claire. Delving for truth through denial and memory gaps. Peter/Claire, hints to S2 Nathan. Oneshot.


A/N: Peter and Claire. Delving for truth through denial and memory gaps. Peter/Claire, hints to S2 Nathan. One-shot.

Rating: T for some swear words

Genre: Drama/Mystery

**Mea Culpa**

It is difficult to define the point where they began running out of options. They had passed dozens of exit signs and now it has led down to this. The door is shut, Claire is nervous, and he, he would bang his head against the wall, if it didn't attract too much attention. She twiddles the straps of her purse and clutches it tight; the black lady with an expanding jet of grey in her hair looks at them, disconcerted. Great, even she can tell he is a bastard.

"Miss Petrelli." It's the _miss _of the Petrelli that sends shivers down Peter's neck and makes it all so damned wrong.

Claire rises, settling the bag beside him, and steps through the door with her hands fidgeting. A true asshole he is.

* * *

"Did it hurt?" She hasn't said anything yet.

"No."

Physically, she means. He is stiff, driving her back from the clinic, trying to find ways to make it all right, even superficially so. He is putting too much blame on himself, that greedy fool. Claire knows she has her own part in what is going on.

* * *

What you can't remember has never happened. It seemed pretty logical the first time she heard it. Can't remember though, who said it to her. _Zach? Jackie?_ Sounds more like Jackie. And the context was pretty much the same.

Another one said some months later that anything you can't remember afterwards you don't remember for a reason. She had only raised her glass and laughed.

And that's what's getting her. This one single slip in her lifetime and she can't even remember doing it. One chance for a mistake and it's like it has never happened.

* * *

She had woken up, on the floor, after one overly long celebration that included lots of champagne and speeches by Nathan. Speeches that turned overly long, too, and she had a hunch that it might have been related to the champagne. Lots of disjointed images, laughter, stumbling upstairs with a stolen bottle of _Rosé_ and she had thought it a beautiful name. Peter had tried to explain her that it was just marking the color of the liquid inside. She wasn't really listening to him.

Her first instinct had been to locate her panties. Absurd, really – 'cause she hadn't been naked in the first place, just misplaced and disoriented. She had discovered with a mild horror that the sweater she was wearing so neatly the day before was on backwards. _Oh shit_.

He was unconscious still, equally disheveled, but fully clad, there on his stomach, his face pressed against the wooden boards. She tried to move silently, not to wake him up, to spare him of the aftermath. She found his blazer on the sofa, wondering which of them put it there and how. It was _so messed up._

God, she would spend hours in her bathroom, checking for signs of hickeys or any other display of foolish passion that might or might not have been there. Her body had erased every proof she could have found. A perfect crime.

* * *

He woke up to a sensation of varnished wood smashed in his face. The smashing continued. Finally he realized it was only his head throbbing and he stumbled awkwardly towards the door. Nausea washed over him, he came to his senses, knelt at the toilet seat, wishing for different kinds of superpowers, curses echoing inside the white ceramics.

That had been all it was, until he went back upstairs to get rid of any signs of last night's drinking. It was when he discovered Claire's panties (_how on earth did he know that_?), stuck between two different parts of the sofa, that something dawned on him. Some drunken stumbling, fumbling, groping, mumbling… _Oh__ God_ – he had whispered in her ear that he liked what she had on.

The blinds drawn over his memories almost felt like some kind of mercy. Out of some desperate hope – ever the optimist – he looked for a half-full bottle. Eventually, he found it, tucked deftly behind the curtains and vases. But damn him, it was all empty.

What to do with her panties? Keeping them would be sick, throw away and the servant might find out, return it to her? He gulped at the thought of seeing her, facing her, explaining it to her. Why her uncle had slept with her after getting her senselessly drunk at her father's party? He knew no such explanation.

* * *

She had to check up on him. Had to see him still breathing. When she reached _the_ room (still desperately scanning for signs), it was empty. Peter was gone and taken his jacket with him. Then a figure emerged before the curtains, materializing all her fears in one person.

"Didn't mean to frighten you… I thought somebody was coming..." This was all he was able to produce.

She had changed into a dark grey pullover, hair combed back, wet from the shower, reading the guilt etched in his gaze, and it was all the proof she ever needed. Damn it. He was never going to drink again.

He was clutching two objects she recognized from last night – the empty bottle and her … Her face colored deep crimson, she felt the heat rush up her neck and burn away on her cheeks. She was really beginning to believe in bad karma. Claire reclaimed her belongings, snatching them from his hand, afraid she might come in contact with his fingers. _Why, oh why, couldn't she remember them!_

* * *

The living room was quiet, dim. They were already used to Nathan having his episodes long after Heidi had left, consulting the glass of liquor seven times too often in a fortnight. He and Claire were nothing compared to that. Just _young_, maybe too careless, but healthy and sane, despite their occasional slips. The cautious comments on drinking were not aimed towards them, and Nathan waved away his mother's advice like some persistent fly.

The porch was bright, looking out into the fresh greenness of the early May. Sun was good on them, dissipated some of the cold gloom they had felt inside the mansion. They sat together, thighs and knees pressed against each other, readjusting to the closeness they had managed to form before all this came down on them.

She smiled at him, after a while. It was warm and sunny and untouched, taking him back to the first time he was locked away, the first time he had felt like a hero. He had missed that smile.

* * *

"We need to talk about this," she broke the silence. And he nodded, knowing there was no other way to deal with this.

"I don't. Feel that you… like I…" An awkward pause, maybe hesitation, searching for the best phrasing. "Like we did something up there."

"You don't remember?" He questioned, uncertain if it was essentially a bad thing or not. She only shook her head, keeping her eyes on him.

"I do remember some things." A pause. She wanted to know. He didn't want her to know. But he began reliving it just the same.

"I remember stealing the bottle…" – "Rosé." – "Right."_(No grinning, remember?)_ – "We stumbled upstairs…" – "Here I blank." – "You groped my butt." (He didn't remember that.) – "You tore at my clothes." (She fell silent.) "I tackled you," he finished there, the guilt clear and palpable after their mutual account on what had really happened.

Some more moments of awkward silence, she was annoyed at how things had progressed and almost ready to break something. Suddenly, Heidi made so much more sense. With her bursts of temper and flying vases.

"But think about it," she put a special effort in changing her tone into a lighter, hopeful one. "When I woke up, we were fully clothed, on the floor, passed out, but…" She inhales. "I didn't dress you. We have done nothing wrong."

He shook his head, grinned a sorry smile. Blew up her balloon with a whiny whistle. "I remember that part with the panties, too."

* * *

The next two days they spent looking for a used contraception that could never be found. Their cooperation in this part was almost methodical, two people focused on the same goal. _Like Mulder and Scully_. Both of them constantly coming up with some new places either of their drunken selves might have hidden it.

Angela, surprised at the sudden interest in their attic, came to check. But she had lost her edge when Nathan started drinking, so there was no suspicion lacing her voice. They told her grandma it was about the gold ring she got for her fifteenth birthday (from her _real_ parents). The woman had offered her assistance, but was met with an instant simultaneous "No!"

If they found it, he was right. It would have been a guilty mess, but a clean one. If they couldn't find anything, it could mean that she was right, or that _he_ was right after all, and that it was a real untidy mess.

As they slumped into the same treacherous couch, he said what she was already thinking. "Maybe we should think about having you… checked?"

* * *

Four days and no answers, she's too terrified even to think about the consequences, and judging by the way he turns the wheel, he's no less than that. They set a new date. A red circle around May 25 and they wait for it anxiously, counting the hours like kids before Christmas.

One morning, without knocking first, she storms into his room, jumps on him, ignoring that he's still half-asleep, half-naked and half-lucid. Claire lands on his bare chest and beams a full smile up to his face.

"My period just started!"

He resolves in an instant, happy for her, doesn't know what to say on an occasion like this. _Congratulations_? He smiles his _proud uncle_ smile and doesn't mind, doesn't notice her hands on his skin. She kisses him on the lips. A short smack.

He truly believes in a normal life, a new beginning, no mistakes from now on.

* * *

If you think about it – really think about it – the signs were pointing at it all along. She knew it, sensed it from the moment they woke up together. There was nothing. Nothing, _nothing bad_ had actually happened other than some odd groping between drunken relatives. It was weird and wrong, of course, but nowhere on the scale of being criminal.

They joke about it sometimes. As funny as it is now: their shocked reactions, the panic, the awkward looks. All over nothing. She smiles at him and makes him forget.

It's in less than a month, soon after her birthday, that she decides to have another go with that red champagne. Just to prove that there is nothing dangerous to it. He takes the simmering glass, dubious, but weakened by the inviting glimmer in her eyes and he's already half-joking that he refuses to take any responsibility for the outcome.

She laughs. A clink to her 18th birthday as he drinks to her health alone.

* * *

_It's hidden in his eyes, buried in his brow, lost in his mouth and lips. She looks for it, everywhere. He joins in the search, turns her inside out and she wants him to find it._

_He backs away but she is there, blurring everything in his view, not letting him stop, run away. Presses into him like there is no tomorrow. One of them is right, but it's all wrong anyway._

She leaves the dreams for even stranger reality. There are sheets this time, soft and white, and a first floor bedroom with large windows and morning light.

But the peace is all delusional. There's another blank gaping in her memory and she swears into the pillow, curses the Heaven and Hell, tears tickling her eyes – 'cause she doesn't remember any of it, can't remember his arms around her. She falls still after this tantrum, exhausted and fully dressed, just her bra missing.

It's going to be his ring, this time.

**The End.**

* * *

Thanks for reading. Hope it was worth it! Comments are love :)


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